Looks like an attempt at a viral ad for Samsung's latest SSD (Solid State Drive) model 840.
The perfect upgrade for the user who doesn't use their computer much anymore, because it's just so darn slow with that old hard drive. If I was a computer I would demand one of these also.

Edit: They're giving away copies of 'Assassin's Creed 3' with this drive. Heavy marketing push.

well, he is named "meat loaf" afterall.
while he had some hard-driving hits in the 70's and his tits were awesome in fight club, he is now living up to his moniker of a meat product that is greasy, fattening, stanky, and a kinda weird.

"Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive "

- Neil deGrasse Tyson ‏@neiltyson

#1 DVR's are always marked up higher then their raw components. It is the usual tax on having the convenience of the set top box.

#2 DVR with cable decoding hardware like this are generally constructed a bit better then off the shelf hardware thus adding to the cost. Also the cable decoder hardware itself is always expensive. The equipment is built to go through more then one customer in its life span.

#3 the dvr might have offered advanced features like whole house DVR (even in consumer Tivo boxs, this is big money) even if the user didn't pay for them.

The finance department doesn't go out of there way to gouge customers who have to pay for damaged hardware. Instead it is customers finding out that the finance departments are getting ripped off on the hardware they pay for.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^arekin:
>> ^Yogi:
I'm sorry but what HIGH Amazing Technology is in a Cable Box that makes it cost more than my last 3 top of the line PCs combined? That's utter BS.

Depends on the cable box really, DVR's have a replacement value of arround $500 each, an EMTA is $300-$600 (depends on the model). I'm assuming we are talking about 4-5 boxes and a modem, which could well be around the amount he was billed. There may also be cable cards in some of his boxes that are billed separately, but they would not be near the cost. Also despite the 5-6 years he owned them cable technology doesn't change that rapidly, so a standard 2way set top box from back in 2000-2002 may still be refurbished and used and may still be a well functioning box. Electronics values depreciate based on reduced function (or continued ability to do what is needed in the current cable television market), and cable boxes don't tend to lose function (as long as they are not 1990's analog equipment), thus they don't tend to lose value.

That's fucking bullshit. For $500 I can build a top of the line PC, how in the fuck is a box with a hard drive in it that much money? That doesn't make any sense...is it made out of gold!?

>> ^arekin:

>> ^Yogi:
I'm sorry but what HIGH Amazing Technology is in a Cable Box that makes it cost more than my last 3 top of the line PCs combined? That's utter BS.

Depends on the cable box really, DVR's have a replacement value of arround $500 each, an EMTA is $300-$600 (depends on the model). I'm assuming we are talking about 4-5 boxes and a modem, which could well be around the amount he was billed. There may also be cable cards in some of his boxes that are billed separately, but they would not be near the cost. Also despite the 5-6 years he owned them cable technology doesn't change that rapidly, so a standard 2way set top box from back in 2000-2002 may still be refurbished and used and may still be a well functioning box. Electronics values depreciate based on reduced function (or continued ability to do what is needed in the current cable television market), and cable boxes don't tend to lose function (as long as they are not 1990's analog equipment), thus they don't tend to lose value.


That's fucking bullshit. For $500 I can build a top of the line PC, how in the fuck is a box with a hard drive in it that much money? That doesn't make any sense...is it made out of gold!?

Charges back when this video were made (this is if every charge was applied)

$50 Hardware install (This was before BBY reduced the charge for installs because of the triviality of it to those of us whom are actual technicians.)

$130 For repair service (This includes Installing Clients OS, All drivers, All Windows Updates, Necessary Program updates {Flash and such}, Full physical computer cleaning, Post Operation Procedures of testing every function from a cold boot and doing that three times before computer is certified complete.)

Cost of hard drive is up in the air, but Given 2009 I remember drives there being in the $90-$130 range depending on capacity, spin rate and such.

$40 - They also probably recommended new Anti-Virus software as that is SOP if the client says theirs is out of date, don't have any or is about to expire.

Which leaves $270. This was the base cost for DATA RECOVERY services (Well, it was $259 for the base, but pretty damn close)

Of course the cost of the recovery would be different depending on the drive.

Level 1 Recovery = $259
Level 2 = $580
Level 3 = $1600 or more depending on the work needed for recovery. These are sent to Kroll OnTrack for clean room recovery or failed RAID arrays, or any OS other than Windows (back in this age at least)

Things were made much cheaper since then, but even for that work and scope of work, it's pretty standard.

You can probably tell I used to be one of the white shirts; and actually kept a department stocked of ACTUAL techs during my tenure.) Feel free to ask away if you have any other questions.


>> ^Quboid:

>> ^EMPIRE:
580 dollars for a disk replacement?? LOL, such theft.

That could include data recovery from the old disk, which is always very expensive (as the old disk is supposed to be broken at this point).

No wonder why they couldn't do calculations, their 386 didn't have a math coprocessor!!!>> ^Phreezdryd:

This seems a little dated (2009?) to be posted now.
IDE hard drive, and a floppy drive?
Just saying I prefer my tech support scam stories to be more timely.

This seems a little dated (2009?) to be posted now.
IDE hard drive, and a floppy drive?
Just saying I prefer my tech support scam stories to be more timely.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

This is just like mechanics, it has nothing to do with geek squad in general...some will be good, some will suck. I've known some to be very concerned with repairs and honesty, and others that care about nothing but sales. As a geek, I have used their hard drive recovery service, and for the store I used, I was very happy.


This

This is just like mechanics, it has nothing to do with geek squad in general...some will be good, some will suck. I've known some to be very concerned with repairs and honesty, and others that care about nothing but sales. As a geek, I have used their hard drive recovery service, and for the store I used, I was very happy.

Need to get that hard-drive running again???

Not playing it how Blizzard intended for it to be played is exactly why there is such an uproar over the game in the first place. Everyone wants to have their way with their Blizzard game and Blizzard ain't complying. Yeah the DRM sucks but there isn't all that much different in Diablo 3 than any other recent Blizz title. It's a scheme. Anyone who has played any of their games since War3 knows that the games are multi-tiered so what at first seems like a simple, boring, repetitive game ends up being finely tuned & crafted in the end. By ACT III on Nightmare mode it becomes apparent and if one doesn't get that far into the game then they really shouldn't be giving it a review because they should just know better from the get-go.

It's got some of the best multiplayer aspects that I've had in recent memory, running relentlessly across vast floors trying to avoid pools of Hell, or encountering impossible zombie mobs moving 50% faster than normal. It's a lot of fun. Blizzard is a different company than they were back in the day, I don't like it as nearly as much as the first Diablo, for sure... but it's still fantastic. It's still Blizzard. Great mechanics - for what it is - better art direction than most games, great sound and the absolute insanity of it on the more difficult modes where it really comes together. Yeah there are a lot of things that piss me off about D3...

I must admit it seems to me like Blizz didn't give it their all on this one... maybe so they can make sure people go back to their cash cow
The levels are barely random, what the ^%$# is up with the lag? There is too much loot like Yahtzee said, the normal mode IS too easy, nightmare & normal are light/day... don't waste our time. The art direction is great... but not as great as I'd expect from Blizz, muddy textures, accesses the hard-drive too frequently, some of those "cut-scenes" are whack, on Hell mode the random encounters are more difficult than the main quests, no in game auction house? Why the hell is that loot popup menu always there? The story is dumb as fuck. But, regardless that is what the Diablo series is - not much innovation here except in chaos and mechanics and that is good enough for me. We can't compare every Blizz game to WoW... and that is exactly why D3 is great, it's like WoW-ultralite meets Left For Dead, nothing wrong with that.

>> ^spawnflagger:

I have seen worse. Usually they come from houses that have 5+ pets, and the PC is sitting directly on the flooor (usually a thick carpet), and the computer hasn't been opened or cleaned once in it's 8+ years that it existed.


Yup, me too. Exactly what you described, but they were also a regular pipe smoker. The components were coated with a layer of sticky yellow tar which the dust and cat hairs also got impregnated with. Made air-duster cans almost useless.

I had to use tweezers to get the bulk of the cat hair out the way, then remove the hard-drive and plug it into another PC via an external cable to recover the data.

Others have already posted links to video recording software. I've used Xfire to record small snips of games, but I don't know if it supports Minecraft. All of the recording programs (AFIK) record raw (i.e. uncompressed) video, so they will be very large files.

If he wants to put in fancy effects and titles, the video editing is probably going to be the most expensive if you go pay software. I don't know of any free programs that can do editing like that. If you just want to put the clips together and compress them, there are some good free programs that can do that. The free programs I've used are VirtualDub and HandBrake. Grab the ffdshow codec. I believe I read somewhere that if you encode your videos using H.264, it makes things easier when uploading to YouTube since it won't have to convert it, and the ffdshow codec can do H.264. I'd start out with free stuff before spending money to make sure it's something he's going to stick with. If he sticks with it, you're going to need to buy some more hard drives to keep backups on too.

I subscribe to and watch a few Minecraft LP channels. I like to watch how other people play and what they do because it gives me ideas of things to do in my own game. One also makes up a story and role plays, which is kind of cheesy but interesting.

You quote The Blind Watchmaker and The Origin of Species but I highly doubt that you’ve read them yourself. If you haven’t then you’re not better than someone who is contesting the bible without having read it. You quote a LOT of scientists that you say are hostile to your position but again, have you actually read the works that you’re quoting from in their entirety? I doubt it.

Well, I have read them and I think it's fairly obvious that I understand the subject matter.

Here are just two things that I read recently that I think are worth repeating:

...degree of thermodynamic disorder is measured by an entity called "entropy." There is a mathematical correlation between entropy increase and an increase in disorder. The overall entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. However, the entropy of some parts of the system can spontaneously decrease at the expense of an even greater increase of other parts of the system. When heat flows spontaneously from a hot part of a system to a colder part of the system, the entropy of the hot area spontaneously decreases! The ICR (Institute for Creation Research)...

....illustrate a fact, but they are not the fact itself. One thing is certain: metaphors are completely useless when it comes to the thermodynamics of calculating the efficiency of a heat engine, or the entropy change of free expansion of a gas, or the power required to operate a compressor. This can only be done with mathematics, not metaphors. Creationists have created a "voodoo" thermodynamics....

I never made the argument that entropy can never decrease in a system. I made the argument that even if you want to use the energy of the sun to explain why life is becoming more complex, you haven't explained the information that makes that possible. More energy does not equal more order. I also don't know why you keep bringing up articles from the institution of creation research and expect me to defend them. I am more than willing to admit that there are some terrible theories by creationists out there, just as there are terrible theories by secular scientists.

For myself, I am only a materialist because there isn’t any demonstrable, non-anecdotal, reproducible evidence for the existence of anything non-material. I hope you can understand that. There is the appearance of design and there is DNA, and we don’t know how everything got started but that’s not good enough for me to believe that it was designed, I need something more concrete because that is the criteria for which I will justify something as believable. I’d be very interested in some sort of evidence like that but it hasn’t happened yet and conjecture just doesn’t work for me so I’ll reserve judgment but maintain doubt and that’s all there is to it.

I can understand your position as a materialist, having formally been one. I did not see any evidence for God or spirit either, and it really rocked my world to discover that there was more, and that material reality is only a veil to a larger reality. It is mind blowing to discover that everything that you know is in some way, wrong.

I think there is some very good evidence pointing towards a Creator, but that isn't going to get you there necessarily. It seems to me though, after talking with you a bit, that if there is a God, you would want to know about it. Maybe you're not terribly interested in pursuing the subject at the moment but you now strike me as someone who is open to the truth. If He does exist, would you want to hear from Him? If He let you know, would you follow Him?

On the scope of evidence, I think the two of the most powerful arguments are the information in DNA and the fine-tuning of physical laws. There is no naturalistic process which can produce a code, and that is what DNA is. It is a digital code which stores information and is vastly superior to anything we have ever designed. It is a genetic language which has its own alphabet, grammar, syntax, and meaning. It has redudancy and error correction, and it is an encoding and decoding mechanism to transmit information about an organism. Biologists actually use linguistic analysis to decode its functions. You also have to realize that the message is not the medium. In that, like all information, you can copy the information in DNA to storage device like a hard drive, and then recode it later with no loss in information. This is a pretty good article on the information in DNA:

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/read-prove-god-exists/language-dna-intelligent-design/

The fine tuning evidence is also very powerfully because it is virtually impossible for the laws to have come about by chance. It's important to understand what fine tuning actually means. I'll quote Dr Craig:

"That the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is a pretty solidly established fact and ought not to be a subject of controversy. By “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” but simply that the fundamental constants and quantities of nature fall into an exquisitely narrow range of values which render our universe life-permitting. Were these constants and quantities to be altered by even a hair’s breadth, the delicate balance would be upset and life could not exist."

So it's not a question whether the Universe itself is finely tuned for life, it is a question of how it got that way. In actuality, the odds of it happening are far worse than winning the powerball lottery over 100 times in a row. Random chance simply cannot account for it because there are dozens of values that must be precisely calibrated, and the odds for some of these values happening by chance is greater than the number of particles in the Universe! For instance, the space-energy density must be fine tuned to one part in 10 to the 120th power, an inconceivably huge number. That's just one value out of dozens. Many scientists understand this.

Here are some quotes from some agnostic scientists, which a couple of Christians thrown in:

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming".

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."
Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Just because the universe and life might have the appearance of design doesn’t mean it was designed. After all, we might all be brains in vats being experimented on by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings and all of this is simply like the matrix. Maybe Déjà vu is evidence that it’s true but there simply isn’t any reason to believe it just like there isn’t any reason to believe in any gods.

But if that were true then the Universe is designed, and this is simply some kind of computer program. In any case, although we could imagine many scenerios I am talking about something very specific; That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead. Moreover, that you can know Him personally, today.

All of the concepts of god and gods have been moved back every time we discover naturalistic explanations where once those gods were accredited. What makes you think that it’s any different with these things? Just because we don’t know what’s behind the veil doesn’t mean that the idea of someone pulling the levers is a better explanation than a currently unknown natural, non-agency explanation. If we don’t know, then we don’t know and putting a god in the place of “we don’t know” isn't a good way of helping us learn more about our universe

The primary question is whether the Universe has an intelligent causation. You believe that Universes, especially precisely calibrated and well-ordered ones just happen by themselves. I happen to think that this is implausible to say the least. You're acting like it's not a valid question, and because we can describe some of the mechanisms we see that we can rule out an intelligent cause, which is simply untrue. You could describe every single mechanism there is in the Universe, but until you explain how it got here, you haven't explained anything. The real question is not how they work but why they work and that question can only be answered by answering why they exist in the first place.

It is also just a fallacy to say that because some peoples beliefs about God have been proven false, that means all beliefs about God are false. Scientists used to believe that there were only seven planets and that the Earth was flat. Does that mean that all ideas scientists have are false? No, and neither does it mean that all beliefs about God are false because people have had ridiculous beliefs about God.

The God I believe in is not ridiculous, and the belief in His existence has led to ideas that formed western civilization and propelled modern science itself. The idea that we can suss out Universal laws by investigating secondary causes is a Christian one, that came from the belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws.

It is also not a brake to doing science to believe that God created the Universe. Some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived believed in God. People like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Max Planck, Mendel and Einstein. It certainly didn't stop them from doing great science.

Also, as I have explained, it is not a God of the gaps argument when God is a better explanation for the evidence.

We know that the universe, space-time, matter had a finite beginning but we can’t say anything at all about that beginning with any certainty. We can’t even say that whatever was that caused the universe is spaceless, or timeless. We just don’t know. This is the god of the gaps argument that started this whole thing. You’re putting a god in as the explanation for what is effectively a gap in our knowledge without anything solid to go off of. It would not be a god of the gaps argument if we eventually could know with a high degree of certainty that there is a god there fiddling with the controls but we don’t. That is the crux of this whole debate. That is why “I don’t know” is a better answer than “A god did it” because it’s absolutely verifiably true where as a god is not.

The ultimate cause of the Universe must be timeless because it must be beginningless, according to logic. I'll explain. You cannot get something from nothing, I think we both agree on that. So if the Universe has a cause, it must be an eternal cause, since you cannot have an infinite regress of causes for the Universe. The buck has to stop somewhere. This points to an eternal first cause, which means that cause is timeless. If it is timeless it is also changeless because change is a property of time. If it is changeless it is also spaceless, because anything which exists in space must be temporal, since it is always finitely changing relation to the things around it. It's timelessness and spacelessness makes it immaterial, and this also makes it transcendent. I think it is obvious that whatever created the Universe must be unimaginably powerful. So we have something which already closely describes the God of the bible, and we can deduct these things by using logic alone.

We just don’t know if the universe is entirely regressable into some sort of endless loop which folds in on itself, or something else, or even if there is a god or not. Furthermore, I hope you look into what physicist mean by “out of nothing” because it doesn’t mean what I think you think it means. It took me a while to understand what it meant and to be honest, it is a bit of a deceptive word play but it’s only that way because there isn’t another way to describe it. I don't actually believe that the universe came from "nothing". I don't know how it all started, so therefore, I have no belief. I don't need an answer to the big questions. I can say "I don't know" just fine and leave it at that.

“A proponent of the Big Bang Theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” Anthony Kenny

British physicist P.C.W. Davies writes, “The coming-into-being of the universe as discussed in modern science…is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization or structure upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.”

Physicist Victor Stenger says “the universe exploded out of nothingness the observable universe could have evolved from an infinitesimal region. its then tempting to go one step further and speculate that the entire universe evolved from literally nothing.

In the realm of the universe, nothing really means nothing. Not only matter and energy would disappear, but also space and time. However, physicists theorize that from this state of nothingness, the universe began in a gigantic explosion about 16.5 billion years ago.

HBJ General Science 1983 Page 362

the universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything.

discover April 2002

I think we can both agree that it is better to know than not to know. That's been one of your primary arguments against the existence of God, that we simply cannot rest of the laurels of God being the Creator because that will lead to ignorance. I have already demonstrated that there is no actual conflict with belief in God and doing good science, so your argument is invalid, but I think it's ironic that on the other side of it, you are arguing that ignorance is a good thing and leads to better science. That you're even intellectually satisified with not knowing. I hope you can see the contradiction here.

The reason why I personally don’t find the whole god argument all that interesting, and the reason why I don’t actually care about it, is because it makes a heck of a lot of claims regarding the nature of god and it’s properties which just can’t be verified. There is nothing that we can concretely discover about god and no predictions that we can make which could eventually be verified meaningfully. How can we possibly know if creator is timeless, or spaceless, unimaginably powerful, transcendent, unembodied, etc? Is it rational to believe that; do you have an equal ratio of evidence to belief? What predictions can we actually make about this god(s). All we have are books and stories written and passed down throughout history. Everything else is just unjustified belief to me.

As I explained above, we can make several predictions about God based on the evidence. Belief in God is rational and can be justified. However, I understand that until you have a personal experience, it is probably going to be unconvincing to you, since this is way you see the world. You demand evidence, and lucky for you, God provides evidence. If you asked Him to come into your life, He would demonstrate it to you. He provided evidence to me, and I know you He will provide to you, especially if you take a leap of faith ask Him for it.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr: